UK Audio Show Deluxe 2025 - Highly Commended Award for Kuzma / SJS Arcadia / Living Voice as presented by Definitive Audio

Vinyl, valves, wood.  A very traditional combination of components, yet at the same time thoroughly modern designs and performance.  Thankfully there was a good range and variety of music on offer in this room, so that was good as it gives a chance to have a proper listen.  The Living Voice R80 again performed well in this room and this system combination, despite being right on the edge of being too big for the room.  It seems the Kuzma - SJS Arcadia synergy is delivered well in this speaker - by far the most musical and coherent speaker I've heard from LV (yes, I've heard the Vox Olympians) - airy, punchy but controlled, imaging well and pushing the emotions in vocal performances.  Definitive Audio fed the system from the Audes DT-3600 power conditioner, making a break from their usual battery array, making the system far more domestically acceptable.  The room was busy on each visit - visitors finding it a good place to spend some time listening to music.

UK Audio Show Deluxe 2025 - Highly Commended and Turntable of the Show Awards for Wilson Benesch

 A big show for WB at Whittlebury this year - they made the World debut of their GMT-1 turntable system. "From" 250,000 GBP, this is a significant product launch - a product already declared by Michael Fremer as "the best turntable for any music, at any price".

Here, Ypison electronics and Wilson Benesch's own new top of the range Eminence loudspeakers and a pair of their infrasonic generators (remember, they're not subwoofers, right?) played the supporting roles to the new vinyl spinner.  The room was moodily lit in a fetching shade of mauve.

I made 3 visits to this room - one of the benefits of there being a relatively small number of rooms, more time can be spent evaluating what's on offer.  The first time, what struck me was the sheer stability of this new turntable.  Perhaps if you're familiar with George Michael's Older you'll know it has some slow paced tracks with long sustained notes.  I think this turntable has brought to the fore one of the reasons I tend to prefer digital sources over vinyl, but perhaps I haven't been concious of it until now. Essentially, on tracks like this, even the best turntables I find less than satisfying.  Today I might've understood why - on those sustained notes this turntable was more convincing than any I've heard before.  Stable in a digital kind of way, if you want to understand how they've achieved this with the direct drive design, take a look at WB's site. More stand out features were the lack of surface noise, clarity and something I'd described as easy dynamics - ie dynamically accomplished but not in a forced over-emphasised kind of way.

Second visit confirmed all of the above, but a chance to stop listening to what the table was doing, and enjoying what the music was delivering.  Third visit included a presentation about the collaborative project that is GMT - including other companies and university input.

On this showing, if you have that kind of money to invest in listening to music at home and you have a significant vinyl collection, make sure you give this table a listen.

See the end of this report for a short video of the turntable in action.

TECHNICS AT THE BRISTOL SHOW 2018 - TURNTABLE OF THE SHOW & MUSIC CHOICE AWARD

TECHNICS
- SL-1000R Turntable with Audio Technica AT-ART1000 Cart
- Technics SU-R1 Pre-Amp
- Technics SE-R1 Power Amp
- Technics Floorstanding Speakers

SL-1000R

The UK launch of the new SP1000R turntable and arm.  A further refinement of the SP-10 / SL-1000 of the past but with new materials, motors and electronics.  The SP will spin its 7kg platter up to speed in under a quarter of a second - that's some torquey motor.
A Luxman phono stage was in use today along with a Quadraspire X-Rack and Audioquest cables.  We only heard one track on this system, but its a long one at around 15 minutes and has lots of variety of music, including electronic, orchestral sounding sweeps and is very well produced.  Have a listen to Nils Frahm's 'Sunson' on the album "All Melody" - its something I've been listening to at home recently and is quite some piece of music, building gradually but demonstrating the artist's imagination and maturity.
What of the turntable?  Well, as a digital source user, this is probably the least turntable sounding turntable I can recall hearing.  Its timing stability is absolutely stunning.  Perhaps this is something that puts me off vinyl but I've never really identified it as an issue, perhaps timing problems associated with a mechanical device attempting to produce stable timing is something I'm sensitive too, but in a subconcious way.  Anyway, this was a very enjoyable and accomplished performance from this turntable.  Impressively musical, something I must admit to not really expecting from Technics.

SP-10

Musings Goes Analogue - Part 4 - RD11s Set-Up

Part One here

Part Two here

Part Three here

Didn't really take enough pictures of this process, so apologies for that.

Before any mass (ie the platters) were added to the deck, I lifted it up onto 2 x inverted storage boxes - they supported the deck down each side of the plinth.  A few pieces of card board packing under the storage boxes allows me to get the deck level in both directions.

Next was fitting of the inner platter and letting it sink into the oil in the bearing.

Inner Platter

Then the belt was fitted (to ensure that any adjustments to the suspension allow for the tension / springiness of the belt).  Then the platter was fitted upside down, then the mat on the top of that.  This ensures that the mass of the suspended part of the deck is correct, but allows for visibility of the drive belt - this helps to ensure that the belt can run without falling off the inner platter.

Using the 3 suspension adjustment nuts underneath the deck (visible when the base panel is removed - this deck doesn't have a base panel), I adjusted the suspension so that the armboard became parallel with the deck top plate.  I then flipped the main platter over and fitted the mat and checked for that the platter was level.  Found that the front left (looking at the deck) was too high, so slackened the suspension nut on that corner.  Flipped the platter back over and then ran the motor to make sure the belt stays on the inner platter.  It was fine first time, even when bouncing the suspension by pushing down on the spindle.

With the platter the right way up and with the mat onboard, a gentle push down on the spindle gave a nice clean vertical bounce - with about 8 bounces before it settles.  This has been the easiest suspended turntable I've ever set up.  Its almost as if it had a Rega arm on it all its life!

Suspension looking high on first time of looking at the platter installed - note the gap between the platter and the top plate

Once the suspension was set up, here you can see the closer gap between platter and top plate

Next is getting the cartridge lined up.   Using a card template supplied with the arm, all that was needed was to position the stylus on the "spot" and adjust the cart in the arm and the position of the template around the platter until the headshell was parallel with the lines on the template.  Once this was done, the cart mounting bolts were tightened up firmly, but not enough to damage the plastic mounting lugs on the cart.

Aligning the arm / cart on the template

Now the arm was balanced by moving the counterweight until the arm "floats" horizontally.  Once this was achieved the tracking weight gauge was turned so that 0 is at the top, then the counterweight and gauge are turned together towards the arm pivot until 1.8 grams was reading on the scale.  The anti-skate gauge is then turned to the same value.

Setting tracking weight

Done.

Deck all set up and playing music

Part 5 will deal with the build of the RD80SL deck with Linn LVX arm.

Musings Goes Analogue Part 3 - RD11s Build

See Part 1 here
Part 2 here

Having had some experience messing about with set up several times on a Thorens TD160BC MkII with different arms and platter mats (very successfully), and with an LP12 (not so successfully - got it close but ended up at a Linn dealer for a full service and set up), I approached the RD11s reasonably confidently, but also in the knowledge that if set up was a problem I'd just do a bit more research and then go back to it.  This is a project for fun and experience building, not as a serious source for my system.

So here's the starting point, a several decades old plinth, suspension and motor unit, sourced through the classifieds at hifiwigwam.com:

Starting point - an Ariston Audio RD11s

Sitting on the workbench in the garage, I started by giving it a quick clean, which wasn't too hard as its in such great condition and came packed with copious amounts of bubble wrap and with the bearing plugged, inner platter and main platter removed, as it should be.

The underside of the deck has no base plate - its lost this somewhere in its no doubt long and varied life.  Still, I think this could be a good thing on 2 counts - first it means easy access to all the relevant suspension adjustment options, secondly, because it is no longer effectively a box, there should be less chance of resonances building up inside which may affect the sound quality.

First was to check the alignment and fitment of the newly arrived soundsupports.com SME to Rega armboard adapter.

Armboard adapter offered up to the existing SME mount

ISOkinetic (Rega) RB202 tonearm, unpacked from its box. Note the low cost "captive" arm lead to carry the signal to the pre-amp

The RB202 is reasonably well made - its very recognisably part of the Rega RB250 family.  The arm tube is nicely cast, the bearings are super smooth with no discernable play and the cueing mechanism is smoothly damped and feels much more expensive than some I've used.  Looks like the main compromises to save money are the plastic moulded thread counterweight mounting and the basic looking captive signal output lead, which looks to be no better than the kind of freebie interconnects you tend to get inside Japanese hifi component boxes.

Armboard fitted to the three-point mounting with countersunk bolts

In order to reduce stress on the tonearm bearings, once the armboard was mounted to the arm, the cartridge was unpacked and installed to the arm, with the mounting bolts only tightened enough to hold the cartridge in roughly the right place.  The stylus guard and stylus were removed prior to fitting the cartridge body to the arm.  The bolts that came with the cartridge were used for this - they're metal, unlike some budget cartridges that come with very flimsy plastic bolts.  The signal cables were connected too, using the correct colour matching of each cable to the each pin on the back of the cart.

Unboxing the Goldring Elektra Cartridge

Stylus removed from cartridge body prior to mounting

Cart  loosely mounted in the headshell and connected up

Armboard adapter then mounted onto the SME armboard using the 4 supplied countersunk self tapping screws.  Note how the arm sits nicely parallel with the side of the deck.  Despite the optical illusion of the photo, the arm isn't too long for the deck and the lid closes with plenty of clearance

Next up, using ISOkinetic supplied oil, I ensured that all the existing oil was soaked up into kitchen towel and then refilled with the new oil.  Before fitting the inner platter I laid a small amount of kitchen towel around the bearing to catch any overflow - of which there wasn't any.

Having given the inner platter edges, outer platter engagement surface and the spindle a clean with alcohol and then a polish with a dry lint-free cloth, the inner platter was gently lowered into the bearing shaft - being careful not to "drop" it into the hole which could damage the bearing surfaces.  The last few mm of travel took about 10 seconds or so as the oil was pushed out of the way.  No excess oil at this point, so I'll remove it again later and put a little more oil in there.

Inner platter installed

The belt was then installed - fitting around the smaller part of the stepped pulley for 33rpm, then wrapping around the outer edge of the inner platter.  Unlike every belt driven turntable I've worked on / owned in the past which had flat ground belts, the RD11s uses a very narrow (2-3mm) square section belt, which is extremely easy to twist during fitting.  I took care not to touch the belt and inner platter surfaces to avoid getting finger grease in there.  Then on went the outer platter (which weighs around 2.5 kg).

Arm and complete platter installed - note the huge gap between platter and top plate

The outer platter should force the suspension down and allow the platter / bearing / subchassis / armboard / tonearm assembly to "float" freely whilst hanging from the suspension springs.  However, the previous owner had diligently wound up the suspension springs pretty tightly to avoid any movement in transit, so although the assembly did drop a little, it was still a long way up above the top plate of the deck.

Setting up and first play is in Part 4.
Part 3 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 1 is here